Murray’s 42 Put Camarillo to Rest, 76-52

Trudging onto the court for the final minute and six seconds, Jason Hunt tried desperately to get his coach’s attention.

“Hey, coach. Hey, coach,” the Camarillo High forward mouthed over the din of a standing room only crowd at Moorpark College. “No timeouts.”

Hunt, apparently, had had enough. And who could blame him?

Tracy Murray and Glendora already had run away with the Southern Section 4-AA Division quarterfinal game Wednesday night and were wrapping up an impressive 76-52 victory.

Murray, the man with everything--shooting touch, leaping ability, dribbling skills, state scoring records, even a fan club named Tracy’s Troopers that wears red shirts bearing that name--scored 42 points. He did it from the inside, from the outside (four three-point shots), from the free-throw line (12 of 13).

Murray is the state career scoring leader and is 10 points away from the single-season record. Camarillo actually held him to nearly three points below his season’s average.

“We played a normal type of defense,” Camarillo Coach John Harbour said. “Our problem is we’re not quite big enough to get up to his level.”

And they weren’t dealing with a normal type of guy.

As for Camarillo (18-7), the Marmonte League co-champion, it violated the first two rules when squaring off against a player of Murray’s caliber.

Rule No. 1: Never have your best player get injured.

Sophomore David Harbour, who leads the Scorpions with 21.1 points a game, sprained his right ankle with less than four minutes gone. He spent the rest of the evening with his foot gingerly propped on top of the water bucket.

“I feel losing Harbour hurt them a lot,” Murray said. “He was their leadership, also. So it hurt them.”

Rule No. 2: Always score in the game’s first four minutes.

Camarillo trailed, 12-0, and didn’t score until Hunt’s layup with 3:40 remaining in the first period.

Never again did the Scorpions come within 10 points of Glendora (27-1).

“The difference in the game, in my opinion, happened in the first three to four minutes,” John Harbour said. “We thought we could score 70 against them. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

Camarillo missed its first 10 field-goal attempts, made two of 17 in the first quarter and seven of 35 in the half.

Although the Tartans led, 37-20, at halftime, Murray apparently was unimpressed.

“They were physical,” said Murray, who every moment seemed to have two or three Scorpions draped over his 6-foot-8, 220-pound frame. “And we weren’t aggressive in the first half. We came out in the second and mixed it up with them.”

Just what Camarillo needed. Glendora outscored the Scorpions, 49-32, in the second half with a little help from Tracy’s friends. J. J. O’Laughlin scored 10 of his 12 points after intermission, perhaps putting to rest the notion that the Tartans consist of Tracy Murray and a bunch of guys who, in 20 years, will still be talking about playing with Tracy Murray. Although one couldn’t blame them.

“We are only one-dimensional when it comes to who scores the most,” Glendora Coach Mike LeDuc said. “We are not one-dimensional when it comes to defense, or execution or anything else we do.”

Camarillo had its moments of execution, including early in the third quarter when it narrowed the gap to 38-25, but the Scorpions’ runs were far too rare.

Frank Dews led Camarillo with 17 points, Rick Schnell added 13 and Jeff Castellanos, who replaced Harbour, had eight.

All in all, a lost evening.

Please, no timeouts.